


Follow it Back to Where You Started

by JellyDishes



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, anyway merrill is more observant than she lets on in this essay i will, pillow talk usually includes potentially offensive remarks and threats right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: Athenril always got the impression that Merrill's wide green eyes saw far more than they let on. And sometimes getting an answer to that most annoying of questions means ensuring that Merrill sees a whole lot more than that.
Relationships: Athenril/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Follow it Back to Where You Started

Athenril kicked a long leg over the edge of Merrill's bed and peered around upside-down at Merrill's bedroom, her gaze eventually falling, as most other's did, on the eluvian. Her sharp eyes noted the gold detailing and construction in the flicker of red-gold lashes, falling away only when Merrill crawled back into bed, book in tow. "Going to tell me more about your tattoos, hmm?" Athenril murmured, tracing her fingers up Merrill's arm in meaningless patterns that earned her a laugh and a kiss.

"Not until you tell me about yours." Merrill's voice was absent, as it often was, but sharpened when Athenril unexpected nodded. Usually she dodged the question or deflected it onto other, far more entertaining matters, but tonight she was feeling generous.

"It marks an occasion," she said, watching as Merrill traced patterns of her own onto Athenril's arms. These ones weren't so meaningless.

"Which one?" Merrill prompted, when more wasn't forthcoming, and looked up just in time to see a half-caught expression chase itself across Athenril's face before the other woman rolled over unexpectedly, making Merrill squeak as she was gathered up and pulled atop Athenril's lap, legs on either side of her thin hips.

"You'll have to guess, sweetheart," Athenril said into her skin as she pulled Merrill down stop her. "Stop guessing, and the game ends."

Merrill frowned thoughtfully, almost a pout, and Athenril couldn’t resist leaning up to take that delicious lower lip into her mouth. Neither could she resist smoothing her hands up the tattoos rippling over Merrill’s back like the dappled shadows of waves over rocks, over muscle, groaning in frustration when Merrill worked a hand between them and pushed back. She was breathing hard, her eyes bright. Athenril knew, with a sinking sensation deep in her breast, that she should have seen this coming. Merrill had a puzzle now, and her sometimes lover was like a dog worrying at a bone about puzzles, though if she caught anyone else calling her lover, any elf, an animal much less a dog, she’d have broken their nose, for a start.

Knowing failure when she saw it, Athenril flopped back on the bed. “What,” she asked the ceiling in a dramatically piteous tone, “what do you want from me, what, what, what?”

“Nothing,” Merrill said mildly, crossing her arms beneath her small breasts as she mulled this over. “That would be cheating, in any case...”

“I meant it to be mysterious,” Athenril groaned louder, reached up to grind the heels of her hands into her eyelids until purple stars bloomed and died. “If it was that easy to guess my secrets, I’d be dead.”

“Perhaps,” Merrill allowed, earning a scoff, but continued, “or perhaps you meant that you marked a time when you surpassed death.”

Athenril peeked out from beneath her hands. “How do you know it wasn’t to mark the first time I got a pretty head of hair between my legs?” She asked, hoping to fluster her, but Athenril should have known better. Merrill barely gave the flicker of an eye to register the comment aside from letting a shoulder rise and fall in a lopsided shrug.

“You wouldn’t be that easy,” she said, making Athenril roll her eyes, then do a double take, but if Merrill had intended her words to be taken that way, she again made no show of it. “You’d do it to mark something big. A change. A decision. An ending.” She sighed, glancing down for the first time, and seemed surprised to see Athenril’s wide eyes peeking out from between her fingers. “Am I close?”

“You,” Athenril rasped, trying for a laugh, “just wound your way back to the beginning.”

“Oh dear,” Merrill sighed. “Like my twine.” The reference completely passed Athenril by, but who was she to complain if her sometimes lover took to using twine in bed? Shifting pointedly beneath Merrill, Athenril lifted a brow in a move she’d spent long hours practicing before reflective surfaces, and was quite proud of the flush this made work down Merrill’s tawny skin. That was better, and the way Merrill leaned down within the circle of her arms, hands coming up to push Athenril’s hands behind her head, was better still.

“Now,” Merrill said in a calm tone quite removed from what her flushed cheeks and uplifted leg crooked around Athenril’s hip would indicate, “I want an answer, and no teasing this time.”

A hint of a fang peeked out of Athenril’s grin. “You think its that easy to pry my lips apart? Better than you have tried.”

“Maybe,” Merrill smiled back, eyes gone hooded and watchful, “but they don’t have what I have.”

Athenril blinked, which was concession enough, but no more. “And what,” she asked lazily, “is that?”

”Stories.”

Athenril drew up a little, blinked. “What?”

“Stories,” Merrill repeated. “I listen when people talk, its my job. The role I was born to play. I record the stories of the people.”

“I thought city elves weren’t ‘your people’,” Athenril said in a tone that had more bite to it than she’d intended, but less than she’d have expected.

“Sometimes even I think so, but. Not tonight. Not now. I listen,” Merrill said again, “and I hear.”

“There are a dozen dozen stories of how I earned my tattoos-” Athenril started, and was hushed by a gentle kiss.

“And all of them are true. And yet none of them are. That’s the secret, or close enough to it.” Athenril was trembling beneath her now, and Merrill quieted. “Oh,” she said softly. “I’ve made you angry. And she was, Athenril realized distantly, and a whole host of other things besides, but chief among them was a strange fear, and as always when that particular annoyance reared its ugly head, she did what she always did to the cause of it: kill it, pay it off, or fuck it. She chose the latter. Easily freed herself with a snap of her wrist and reached up to haul Merrill down by her hair.

Merrill went easily, humming a question against her mouth that Athenril had no intention of answering. Not now, and not ever.

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive any lateness in responding to comments, because of my social anxiety. Thank you for your patience!


End file.
